Needle making lessons- Guest video tutorials& my expanded commentary on them

Well well, there seems to be one other person out there on the web talking about this! I found these video tutorials on Youtube. They're nice as far as they go, I've added my additional comments below them, but kudos to her! Her site seems to be part of some class project, but whether she's the teacher or student I've not figured out.

My additional comments

I've used the same kind of toothbrush for one of my needles! I like to finesse it a bit by using angled wire/tin snips to make two angled cuts.

I'll also sometimes use a fine toothed saw such as one would use on metal to create guiding grooves, so the brush doesn't splinter (as has happened to me on several occasions when I've tried to "brute force" it like this.

I especially love then sticking it in an old fashioned pencil sharpener, the kind with a handle you crank, not the shoddy little razor blade ones, to do the rest of the sharpening. This has yielded my best needles, and saves a LOT of work. But kudos to you for putting this up here, this is a grand old craft, and so "green" too, since you make it out of things which would otherwise be discarded.

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Next, her tutorial on sanding the toothbrush

My comments:

I usually use a knife (if I don't have access to one of those wonderful old pencil sharpeners) to hone the needle to the general shape I want or the person for whom I'm making it desires first, then sand it.

Enlarging the hole (assuming you started with a brush which had one.)

My comments:

That's a great idea, BTW, for how to enlarge the hole. I've never tried sandpaper, I usually use one of the specialty craft knives I have to enlarge it. I almost always do enlarge my holes since I use such a wide range of "fabrics"- from blue jeans to old shower curtains to plastic bags.

For brushes without holes, I've tried using power drills, but thats a bit dicey... I prefer to use an awl, which is the main tool I use to enlarge the hole also. That failing, a very small short bladed knife will do- to create the hole, use the point as a drill, then once you're though keep going until its large enough. You'll probably need to sand or file down the edges around the hole.